Southside Elementary PTO volunteer charged with stealing checks

A Southside Elementary School PTO volunteer was charged Aug. 2 with 11 counts of uttering a forged check and one count of scheme to defraud in a case involving stolen checks from the organization, Sarasota Police Department said. Additional charges are pending, police said.

Tiffani Donovan is charged with taking 11 checks totaling $7,325 between July 4, 2016 and Dec. 17, 2016 and depositing them into a personal Chase Bank account. Every one of the 11 checks were made payable to the Southside PTO and hand endorsed by Donovan, police said. Civilian investigator Melody Shimmell said Donovan deposited the checks through ATMs, which don’t have the capacity to validate that they’re going to the right account.

SPD officials said she has at least one child who attends the school. She served on the PTO committee from August 2015 to October 2016.

She was arrested at her office in downtown Sarasota on Aug. 2 and booked at the Sarasota County Jail before being released on bond later that day. A call to Scott Miller, Donovan’s attorney, was not returned.

In May 2017, members of the Southside Elementary PTO came to the Sarasota Police Department to report missing funds. According to Shimmell, a parent donated $250 and in return was supposed to be able to pass out fliers with students. When the fliers were never authorized, she talked with the PTO, which in turn discovered it never received the money.

Shimmell said in addition to the 11 stolen checks there are potentially other donors who would have no idea if their money was stolen.

"It’s a sad state of today’s society that you can’t trust parents that volunteer at a school to help their kids to be honest,” Shimmell said.

The SPD said checks and cash were sent by parents and brought to the school by their children or were dropped off at the school office.  They were then placed in an open mail slot in an unsecured area of the office.

PTO president Caprill Hembree said there was a mail slot in the office, but the organization usually uses a secure lock box. She declined to comment on how she believed Donovan may have accessed the money. Hembree said the PTO is revamping its security measures.

“We’ll be doing our best to ensure this never happens again, even though we were following all measures that were in place for this to not happen,” Hembree said.

Hembree said she doesn’t believe any more money was misallocated beyond the 11 checks identified by the SPD, but the PTO is working with all Southside parents to track down any potential missed donations. She said they are working with the SPD, Sarasota County School Board and Chase Bank to recover all funds.

As the investigation continues, Southside Elementary is still without several thousand dollars intended for students, less than two weeks before the start of the new school year.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Southside PTO President. The correct spelling is Caprill Hembree.